Saturday, November 18, 2006

Casino Royale

Well I saw the movie last night at 9:50 p.m. and got home at 1:00 a.m., so I didn't feel like writing the review for Casino Royale. I'll try not to spoil the plot or give away any details in my post.
First off Daniel Craig did a good job playing the role of 007, but I was confused while watching the movie. (More on confusing in a second). I believe the movie is centered around when Bond starts his career as a secret agent, yet the movie is modern day. So I guess the Bond time line over the last thirty years don't exist for this movie plot. You could tell that this Bond is more physical and rough around the edges than the last Bond [Pierce Brosnan], so that makes a little bit of sense on why they axed Mr. Brosnan. In all, the movie wants to take Bond in a new direction that he could not go. I would not be surprise if Hollywood remakes all the Bond movies since their obsession of remakes.

The open action sequence was great, very fast, very OMG did he just do that. Thumbs up for the first 15 minutes. But after that the movie slows down with little bits of excitement. Now the title of the movie is Casino Royale and the major climax for the movie is a poker tournament. So for like 30 minutes they are playing poker with action happening in between the breaks of the game. I guess the producers wanted to cash in on all the craze of poker on TV. You know there are like 10 channels that show Poker Tournaments every day. I typically flip past them, so I was getting really bored during this part of the movie. Of course the winning hand is between good guy and bad guy alone. And both have excellent hands but one is better, neither likely to happen at the same time. Too cliche for me. Then some more action and then a very slow part near the end where you like why are you showing this to me.

Now for the bad, the sexy banter that Bond is known for is absent from the movie, unless they want you to see Bond before he gets all smooth. So this a prequel for the Bond series yet it is modern day. (Sorry for repeating that.) The transition from scene to scene is poorly done. The gadgets are gone and replaced with his fist. He freaking runs everywhere through the movie. Everyone has a cell phone in the movie and answers every 15 minutes, I bet the movie was sponsored from a cell phone company. The last 30 minutes of the movie should have been redone. There were only two girls in the movie, only one was a "Bond" girl.

Now for the good. Action was great, the realism was much better than previous movies. If he got beat up in the movie, he still had the bruises in the next scene. The Bond girl reaction to seeing death was better than "Hey you kill him, want to do it?" mentality from the previous movies is gone.

Over all. If you are a Bond fan, go see it, if you are a movie fan, rent it. That's my report.

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